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Raid on Cravinyr City
The Raid on Cravinyr City was a Loyalist operation that took place on AormeLook to Windward, chapter 4 during the closing stages of the Chelgrian Caste War.Look to Windward, chapter 3 The Loyalists descended to the city from the privateer Winter Storm. They infiltrated the Military Technical Institute and extracted the substrate containing stored personalities of soldiers and military personnel back to the ship. The extraction was harried by an s offensive.Look to Windward, prologue The privateer was caught and destroyed by an Invisible fleet before it could reach safety. The storage substrate survived and was retrieved after the war.Look to Windward, chapter 6 Background Before the Caste War, the Chelgrians developed Soulkeepers to store their personalities ("souls") upon death, allowing them to be revived later or released into heaven.Look to Windward, chapter 8 The Military Technical Institute in Cravinyr City stored the souls of a thousand soldiers and military personnel. These personnel were unwanted during peace, but during the Caste War these sorts of stored personalities became valuable resources to be fought over, retrieved or denied to the enemy. Near the end of the war, Worosei used her social influence to convince the Loyalists to support a risky mission to retrieve the souls from Cravinyr City. The city was contested by the Invisibles and the souls might be destroyed. Interstellar transport was provided by the Itirewein clan articled privateer Winter Storm; Worosei's husband and comrade-in-arms, Tibilo Quilan, belonged to that clan''Look to Windward, chapter 2 and both were in the strike team. History Retrieving the souls The Loyalist strike team inserted into the city included Worosei, Quilan, two of Quilan's squires, Hulpe and Nolica, and a Navy special forces triune. The storage substrate was located as expected in the Military Technical Institute; the storage substrate was the size of a domestic chiller unit. The substrate was too large for it and the team to fit into the ship's small flyer simultaneously. As a result, only the substrate and two Navy personnel were extracted on the first flight. Withdrawal from Aorme The Invisible attacked with heavy weaponry and forced the Loyalist team to hide and wait for ''Winter Storm s flyer to return. They were discovered, and only Worosei and Quilan survived to flee under the cover of a Loyalist counter-attack during the night. The pair reached the Phelen Plains and took cover in crater. A crippled land destroyer rolled down and trapped Quilan, breaking bones in the process. Worosei remained with her husband while waiting for the flyer. She burned out her suit's AG unit in an unsuccessful attempt to free Quilan. With no heavy lift was available to move the vehicle, necessity and Quilan's insistence forced Worosei to leave on the flyer alone under enemy fire. Neither expected Quilan to survive. The next morning, a severely injured Quilan was taken prisoner by the Invisibles for ransom. Rebel pursuit Winter Storm and its smaller escort ship left Aorne, but were intercepted by an Invisibles fleet a few days later. The privateer was destroyed by a device like a gravity-wave impactor weapon. The crew, and Worosei, were killed instantly and permanently; the weapon was specifically designed to destroy Soulkeepers. The legacy technology substrate recovered from Aorne was unharmed. The escort vessel was also chased down and destroyed, although some souls were later recovered. None of the Loyalist ships managed to transmit their positions in their distress calls, and the wrecks were lost. Aftermath Elements from the failed mission later played a role in the Chelgrian's covert attempt to destroy the Culture's Masaq' Orbital, in retaliation for the Culture's role for the starting the Caste War. Quilan survived the war, and was deeply affected by Worosei's death; he welcomed the prospect of death and was recruited to carry out the suicide attack.Look to Windward, chapter 8 Winter Storm and the storage substrate from the Military Technical Institute were recovered around the Chelgrian year 3455 on the eve of the operation; the stored personality of Admiral-General Sholan Hadesh Huyler was copied into Quilan's modified Soulkeeper to advise and assist Quilan. References Category:Battles of the Caste War